A tablet chair is a chair having an arm with an enlarged end portion at the front of the chair, relative to a person occupying the chair, to provide a work surface. Tablet chairs are commonly used in educational institutions to provide students with a surface for notebooks and the like so that notes can be taken, and for other purposes. Some such tablet chairs have enlarged work surfaces which are simply a fixed portion of the arm, the arm being a flat board shaped to form the arm as well as the work surface. Other tablet chairs have a forward portion which is hinged in some fashion with respect to the rest of the chair arm so that the tablet can be folded or swung to the side of the chair when not in use. Many varieties of such chairs have been developed, some constructed as individual chair units and others formed in interconnected rows for use in auditoriums and the like. Also, the technique for hinging or pivoting the tablet portion can take many forms.
The particular hinge arrangement or shape of the tablet is of relatively little significance to the present invention. Of particular importance is the fact that such tablets normally provide a work surface having an area in the order of 150 square inches or less. While this is adequate for the usual note taking during a class lecture, it is quite inadequate when students are taking examinations, particularly standardized tests such as the SAT and similar tests which tend to measure aptitude or achievement for purposes of evaluating students or schools. These tests are commonly given using a question booklet and one or more answer forms which, for convenient use, should be spread out on a desk in front of the student so that he can repeatedly refer back and forth between the booklet and answer sheet. Other test situations present similar requirements.
Many such tests are given in auditorium or other classroom situations where the seating involves tablet chairs and the tablets are simply too small to accommodate the test papers. While larger tablets could be substituted for the existing ones, this would involves substantial expense, not only for the additional tablets themselves, but for the labor in removing the original tablets and replacing them with larger ones. It would then be necessary to expend further labor cost to restore the original tablets since they could not be allowed conveniently to remain on the chairs.